A reply to Pinkers avoidance of nihilism--论文代写范文精选

我们似乎拥有天生的道德感，在一些正确和错误的理解和判断，关于某些行为倾向。我们有广泛共享的直觉，对特定行为的对与错认知。它可能是人类基本的动机(也许是感官和知识的乐趣)。下面的essay代写范文进行论述。

Abstract
Steven Pinker observes that an evolutionary basis for morality invites nihilism because of the nature of evolutionary adaptation, which happens by chance and persists because of its survival value. Pinker thinks nihilism can be avoided because moral behavior may have evolved in conformance with an objective morality grounded in the logic and benefits of reciprocal, cooperative behavior. Even if there isnt an objective morality, Pinker argues that our moral sense is real for us and cant simply be dismissed. But the logic of reciprocal obligation  the difficulty in arguing that someone has an obligation towards you without your being similarly obliged -- only applies if we already accept someone having an obligation to do something rather than just finding it desirable. The net benefits of cooperation also do not imply obligations. While morality is still real for us, this too falls short of the objective grounding of morality needed to refute nihilism. We can have morality, but we are on our own in defending it.
 
We seem to possess an innate moral sense some understanding of right and wrong and the inclination to judge certain acts accordingly. We have widely shared intuitions about the rightness and wrongness of specific acts. Our pleasure at doing the right thing or being in the right is often intensely experienced; it may be one of the fundamental human pleasures and motivations (perhaps along with sensual and intellectual pleasures). Right and wrong also seem for many to be a matter of fundamental, objective truth(s), even if we cant always see or agree on those truths and even if their source (Platonic realism? divine commandment? the rational discovery of what benefits us?) is a matter of contention or mystery.
 
Steven Pinker (2002, 2003; Wright, 2002) and others (e.g., Wright, 1994; Katz, 2000) have argued persuasively for the evolutionary basis of our moral sense the gradual, if accidental, development of moral responses and reasoning that provided net survival benefits and so persisted as human characteristics. Moral judgment and reasoning may just be one of our innate mental faculties, even if many of the specifics are subject to variation and change.
 
But an evolved morality is a morality that arose by chance. Pinker recognizes that this invites nihilism, the belief that there are no real or objective truths of morality. On this account of moralitys origins, any innate moral reasoning or truths are just a set of intuitions and behaviors that weve stumbled upon (e.g., an inclination to sympathize with and help others) that provide certain benefits. These intuitions and behaviors can be further shaped or extended by a particular society and by individual choice, but their source remains the non-fundamental ones of genetic accident, culture and personal choice.
 
Pinker himself does not hold a traditional nihilist viewpoint and offers two arguments for avoiding nihilism. The first is that even if our moral sense evolved through chance adaptations, these adaptations proved useful because they were in conformance with an objectively real morality. This would be similar to the evolution of our 3D perception: although occurring by accident, it was the better fit to reality that gave that adaptation its survival advantage. The world really is 3D; that is what 3D vision hit upon and why we have it today.
 
Pinkers second argument for avoiding nihilism is that even if morality is not objectively real, it is still as real for us as if it were written into the cosmos (2002, p. 193). Our pleasure at experiencing a sunset may also be the result of contingent evolution, but it is no less real for that.
 
But both of Pinkers arguments are flawed. Taking them in turn:
 
(1) Pinker believes that the objectively real morality for which we have evolved is based on a reciprocal point of view regarding treating other people, a view embodied in the golden rule, the categorical imperative and similar moral precepts. While there is evidence for an evolutionary basis to such reciprocal thinking, the argument for defeating nihilism hinges on the assertion that this reciprocity-based morality is objectively real. To demonstrate that, Pinker argues that this is the only possible morality, that its truth has an intrinsic, objective character based on how people reason:
 
According to the theory of moral realism, right and wrong exist, and have an inherent logic that licenses some moral arguments and not others. Given the goal of being better off, certain conditions follow necessarily. No creature equipped with circuitry to understand that it is immoral for you to hurt me could discover anything but that it is immoral for me to hurt you. (Pinker, 2002, pp. 192-193)
 
No particular person can argue that he occupies a privileged position in the universe whose well-being can trump the well-being of anyone else simply because thats a logically untenable argument as soon as one enters into rational discourse at all. (Pinker, 2003)
 
Moral realism is the philosophical position that there are some objective facts of morality that are true or false in the same way that other claims are true or false, and that at least some of them are true (Smith, 2000). The truth of moral realism would by itself refute nihilism. The idea of reason or rationality licensing morality is not really a consequence of moral realism, as Pinkers words might suggest, but one long-standing argument on behalf of it. This seems to be Pinkers main point: that morality is objective (and moral realism true) because of the inescapable logic of reciprocal behavior.
 
This argument for moral realism has a long philosophical tradition but a fundamental problem, which both Williams (1985) and Harman (Harman & Thomson, 1996) have pointed out: Although we might judge another hurting us as undesirable, that does not mean we must insist on their obligation not to hurt us. Even if we have evolved a moral sense that gives rise to such a judgment the question at hand is whether that judgment and the associated affective responses can be rooted in something other than contingent evolution. To assume the legitimacy -- and not simply the desirability -- of someone elses obligation is to beg the question at hand. The nihilist (or amoralist) does not in the first place accept the objective reality of particular rights or obligations or a need to define them.
 
This is not to deny that reciprocity and impartiality are elements of our moral sense, or that acceptance of anothers obligations, or submission to a contract of rights and responsibilities, entails obligations for oneself. Its hard to argue that its acceptable to park illegally whenever its convenient while rejecting the view that everyone should be able to do that. One may similarly think one should not (without good reason) lie to or hurt another if one wouldnt accept that behavior by others. But choosing to accept or not accept certain behaviors, as opposed to counting them as desirable or undesirable, is to already grant the existence of an obligation regarding those behaviors. When obligations are foundational to a community we may demand that others respect them, and may feel, think and act as if they have an objective basis. But we cant ground that basis in logic everyone is compelled to observe by reason alone.
 
Pinker (2002) also sees support for the rightness of reciprocal behavior in the observation that one is better off not shoving and not getting shoved than shoving and getting shoved (p. 187), i.e., in the actual benefits of certain reciprocal behaviors. These benefits are presumably the very survival benefits that led to the evolution of such behaviors given human goals and characteristics and the fact that we live in groups. But specific individuals (or nation states) may not accept obligations resulting from desired net benefits because they reason differently, rationally believing, for example, that shoving and sometimes being shoved may give them an overall advantage, or that they are or are not likely to be shoved regardless of their behavior. The egoist, the strongest or the already disadvantaged can reason this way without contradiction (Harman discusses the case of those at a disadvantage in Harman & Thomson, 1996).（essay代写)
 
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